Pascale Swanson

Tag: Adobe After Effects

  • Getting Back Into It (#242 and #329)

    Getting Back Into It (#242 and #329)

    Well, 2020 was a tough year and so far 2021 has been more of the same. Hopefully we will soon be looking at covid-19 in the rear-view mirror.

    During this time I’ve dealt with several other major life hurdles, but I’m back again – hopefully I will be able to blog more regularly going forward.

    Today I thought I’d create something for the eLearning Heroes Challenge. This piece marks my (second) return to completing the eLearning Heroes Challenges after a long hiatus.

    I combined two challenges:

    • Use Audio, Music, and Sound Effects in eLearning (242)
    • Using Video Backgrounds in eLearning (329)

    I originally planned on creating something only for #329, but I felt the finished project needed a little something extra. After adding in the audio, I thought it would be a nice little piece for challenge #242 as well.

    I wanted to make use of video for two purposes.

    1. To set the scene: this was accomplished with the introductory video.
    2. To add a bit of interest to the background of the main content: I chose something that was interesting but not so interesting that it distracted from the content or caused cognitive overload.

    Additionally, I chose an inductive style of content presentation. Although typically this would include more detailed feedback, I wanted to keep this quite simple for the challenge.

    When it comes to technical challenges, I addressed the continuous video and audio playback by creating a single layer course, with different visibility settings for each layer to ensure the background video and audio continued to play while new content was presented.

    I hope you enjoy it!

  • How to be happy like a child (#248)

    How to be happy like a child (#248)

    This portfolio piece marks my return to completing the eLearning Heroes Challenges. It has been over a year since my last project and I wanted to return with a bang, so I chose this particularly unstructured – yet challenging – topic as my first project in 2019.

    This portfolio piece was created for the eLearning Heroes Challenge #248 (Choose your own eLearning challenge, extreme edition), which required the combination of three previous challenges into one entry. I chose #186 (Create an eLearning template using Pantone’s 2018 color of the year), #242 (Use audio, music, and sound effects in eLearning), and #247 (Using eLearning characters to engage and connect with learners).

    To add in an even bigger challenge, I also used this as an opportunity to practice some photoshopping skills. In this case I took 6 images and turned each individual image into a mini-movie. These mini-movies were made without the addition of any extra elements or backgrounds.

    For example, I took an image of a child playing soccer and animated the boy and the ball. To make this work, I had to fill in the background of where the boy and the ball originally were placed so that there wasn’t a hole in the background when they moved out of their original locations.

    I am really pleased with how this project turned out. I believe strongly in the project’s message and the experts’ words of wisdom. I hope you enjoy it!